Both Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz's war at UFC 202 left them battered and bruised, but according to them, they weren't 100 percent healthy heading into the much anticipated rematch.
Diaz said after the fight that his knee was banged up for about a month, but refused to use his injury as an excuse for the loss via majority decision. He also mentioned that he caught the injury on tape, in case there were any doubters.
“I was injured coming into this fight. And that ain’t some excuse, either. I got the whole thing on tape.” Diaz said. “I hurt my knee about a month ago, and I wasn’t able to train jiu jitsu for the past month. And then about two weeks after that, I was just sparring boxing and I really hurt my rib. I got hit in the body by my [training partner], Alan Sanchez is a really good boxer, skilled boxer. And that put me out of sparring about two and a half weeks ago. And I got that all on tape, just to set it up, not to make excuses cuz I got all that video’d up.”
As for McGregor, his injury was a knee ailment that he suffered during training camp. The UFC Featherweight champion mentioned that he was practicing leg kicks. which caused the injury. McGregor furthered injured his shin because of the large volume of leg kicks thrown to Diaz throughout the fight, something not often seen from McGregor
"My ankle was a bit banged up going into it," McGregor said after the fight. "It was my left ankle. We were practicing leg kicks in camp, but that's nothing. Right now it's my shin [that is hurt]."
It is uncertain how severe the injuries are, or how long it will take either fighter to recover from those injuries.